How To Downsize From Two Closets To One

Alternative post titles:

• My Personal Armageddon
• True Life: I am a Hoarder
• I Can’t Believe There Were No Living Creatures In There
• Finding Jeans I Wore In Middle School

Just like those inspiring stories of personal accomplishment that you sometimes hear where the hero says “If my story helps just one person out there, I have done my job,” this is one of those moments for me.  Dramatic?  Perhaps.  Unless your closet(s) looked like mine.  Honestly, until seeing it in a photo, I didn’t think it was that bad.  Even though my husband literally couldn’t even look when I opened the closet door.

It’s like that dream that people have where you show up to a party in your undies.  This photo makes feel uncomfortable and exposed.

When my husband moved into my room (see previous post), it meant he would also be moving into one of my closets.

The left closet was mostly pants & skirts (and shoes obviously), belts, hats, scarves and purses were sprinkled in the left closet as well and the right was mostly tops and dresses with some purses (and more shoes).  This was organized in a very Mindy fashion.

Where did I even begin to start this day-long process you ask?  Well, I chose to give the Mr. the left closet (my pants and accessories mess closet).  So I emptied this one out first. I made two piles on the bed.  One pile was things I was keeping, and one was for out of season things to store. I also set up two trash bags.  One to be donated to Good Will and one that was going in the trash.  If you can’t find the bags in this photo, they’re at the bottom 😛

 

Then I went through my “keep” pile again and purged some more.  I told myself if I haven’t worn it in the past year, I was tossing it.  So I did.  And whined like a three-year old.

A few garbage bags and a lot of pouting later…the left closet was finally empty.

 

Onto the next one!  I emptied this one out too.  Made my keep & store piles then my two garbage bag system.  I kept the shoes in a mountain to be sorted at the end.

Where’s Waldo Max?

Once I narrowed it down to the clothes I was keeping, I had to figure out how to store my accessories.  I grabbed a hanger and some cheap shower curtain rings like this:

Then hung my scarves on them… and snapped this blurry picture.  I was delirious at this point.

I bought the really slim velvet hangers so I could pack as many clothes into the small space as possible.  Once the clothes and scarves were put in the closet, it was time for the moment I was dreading most.  My summer shoes went into a huge plastic storage container and into our attic until CT decides to thaw out.  I put my shoes that survived the Great Closet Purge of 2015 on the rack in my closet.  I have lots of flats that never seem to stay put on the wire shoe rack, so I used two small plastic bins from Target’s dollar aisle and nailed them to the wall of my closet and BOOM.  Storage for my flats and in the summer these will store my flip flops as well.

 

All of my purses that I kept went into pretty fabric baskets I scored at Target and placed under my nightstand for easy access.  The whole project took about 12 hours, but it actually happened.

This is what I felt like after:

And just because I love a before & after shot…

It was a traumatic experience that I was dreading for my whole life years.  But it was so cleansing.  I swear I am so zen right now.